Chan Lowe: Charlie Crist, the great Democratic hope?

Charlie Crist, the great Democratic hope?

April 22, 2013|By Chan Lowe

It’s nice to see that, in spite of my paper’s subscriber pay wall, some of The Lowe Down’s old “friends” have returned to weigh in on my posting about loyal American Muslims being among the victims of the Boston Marathon tragedy. Thank you for proving my point so eloquently through your comments.

Moving on, the Florida Democratic Party hasn’t shown much initiative over the last couple of decades. By any conventional political yardstick, it is they who should be in control in Tallahassee—both in the legislative and the executive branches.

Democrats outnumber Republicans in Florida by half a million voters, yet in the last election they narrowly avoided a Republican supermajority in the Senate that would have effectively turned the few remaining Democrats into janitorial staffers. Clearly, it isn’t about the numbers; it’s about passion, commitment and ruthlessness, which the Republicans possess in abundance.

Witness the problem Democrats are having finding someone, anyone whom average Floridians have heard of to be their standard-bearer against the highly vulnerable Rick Scott. Alex Sink, who ran the last time, isn’t exactly a household word. Well, actually, she is—but not politically speaking. The rest are local big fish in small ponds.

Charlie Crist—“Chain Gang Charlie,” who just a couple of years ago was espousing positions that are anathema to the Democratic cause, has performed a Romneyesque conversion in reverse, and is now ready for primetime with a new label. That party bigwigs are grudgingly calling him the front-runner, thanks to his high profile and fund raising ability, says more about the ideological bankruptcy of the state Democratic Party than it does about Charlie.

“We could do worse,” isn’t exactly a galvanizing rallying cry, but then not everybody has the luxury of running against Rick Scott.